A view from outside the fishbowl...

[mcscajun]

...that is America. We're like a goldfish in a small bowl, thinking it's the whole universe. That was brought home to me this past week, as I sat in a small hotel in Doolin, County Clare, Ireland, reading the Sunday paper, and again on Monday as I read the paper there. In neither case was any news from the US covered; no mention of Bush, Cheney, Iraq, our political scandals, nothing. Oh, sorry...there was One little blurb in the Dublin paper, about a shooting in a church in Detroit.

Meanwhile, I scanned DU on my return looking for any commentary on the riot in Dublin on Saturday. Nothing. Not even in the Irish Affairs group. Nothing either on the UN Election for Secretary-General.

Thinking about the RTE News vs. US News, they see more info about what's breaking in various European papers on a daily basis; that's easy, 'cause we get Zip unless we go looking for it online.

Interesting to leap from the fishbowl on occasion; I've been breathing air for the past two weeks, and I'm going to enjoy a little more on this side of the Atlantic before I leap back into the insanity we live with here in the US.